Typological Comparison of Relativization in Amharic and Ezha

Abstract

This article describes the structure of relative clauses in the Amharic and Ezha Languages thereby making typological comparison between the two languages. Both headed and headless relative clauses are attested in both languages. A headed relative clause in both languages is found to be prenominal as the clause precedes the head noun that is to be modified. With reference to both headed and headless relative clause types, constituents which relate to a subject, direct and indirect object, oblique, and possessor noun are found to be relativized in the target languages. By so doing, Amharic employs the relativizer jәin perfective conjugations, while it makes Endalew Assefa Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia Email: endexye2006@gmail.com Received 16 January, 2019; Revised 12 February, 2019; Accepted 7 August, 2019 Copyright © 2019 Language Research Institute, Sejong University Journal of Universal Language is an Open Access Journal. All articles are distributed online under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 30 Typological Comparison of Relativization in Amharic and Ezha use of ɨmmto relativize imperfective verbs. On the other hand, Ezha uses jәin the relativization of perfective structures, whereas it employs no overt morpheme to relativize imperfective verbs, hence, zero marking. Unlike Amharic, Ezha employs no overt relativizer on negative relative verbs. The relativized constituents of headless relative clauses in both languages are traceable as they can be recovered by considering the agreement suffixes attached to the respective relative verbs.